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Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

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41–50 of 671 posts

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#41
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Unreal Engine actually delivers some value for their cut.

The Apple software/hardware ecosystem delivers no value?

Why should developers also pay for this, when end users already do? Apple is double dipping like a world-class monopolist (see: ISPs who charge both peers and customers).

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#43

The way this is worded makes no sense - surely it should be for the first $1,000,000? $1,000,000 = $150,000 $1,000,001 = >$300,000? It feels like a knee-jerk reaction to the ongoing complaints without much forethought other than an arbitrary change in the percentage below some round number.

So on Jan 1st every year your commission would suddenly fall from 30% to 15%, until you hit $1M and it jumps back up to 30%? That seems rather arbitrary.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#44
post #15

Weird how this is the exact opposite of Valve's strategy: > For all sales between $10 million and $50 million, the split goes to 25 percent. And for every sale after the initial $50 million, Steam will take just a 20 percent cut. https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18120577/valve-steam-gam...

Why weird? 2 different strategies with completely different goals. Valve's strategy looks like to maximise revenue and get big companies on board that do $10+ mil in sales giving them incentives and discounts to be on the platform. (I think of it as tax break to incentivise high-earners to stay in the state/country) Apple's strategy looks like to put more money into small companies/developers, while still charging th…

This is a direct effect of a closed platform (iOS) vs an open one (PC).

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#46
post #15

Weird how this is the exact opposite of Valve's strategy: > For all sales between $10 million and $50 million, the split goes to 25 percent. And for every sale after the initial $50 million, Steam will take just a 20 percent cut. https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18120577/valve-steam-gam...

You don't need to distribute on Steam. While it can bring legitimacy to an indie, alternatives exist. Not so with the App Store.

Steam wants to disincentivize big companies making their own distribution, which is why they have the regressive split.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#47
Wow. That's amazing. That's a 20% increase in revenue for those eligible. I'm guessing they decided the increased value of their products from more smaller developers creating apps for the platform is greater than the lost revenue.

If I understand correctly though, since it's a hard cutoff it creates this gap between 1m and ~1.2m where you're actually worse off by making more money pre-tax.

   999k --[-15%]--> 849k
  1000k --[-30%]--> 700k
  1213k --[-30%]--> 849k

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#48
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really isn't a problem in practice, unless you are going out of your way to try to bend the rules set in place, especially about sales.

It can be a problem in practise since the rules aren't fairly or consistently enforced. Look to recent issues with iSH being approved and rejected. Edit: as others have pointed out iSH isn't the best example of this.

While I agree the rules are often inconsistently enforced, and I'm a fan of iSH, I think the real surprise is it was ever approved in the first place, as it seems to clearly be violating the "spirit of the law" regarding Apple being pretty clear they don't want apps that allow arbitrary binary execution.

iSH tried to circumvent this with a technicality, and it seems to have initially "worked", but I think it's a poor example of an app unfairly/inconsistently targeted.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#49

Great move! 30% is a case for antitrust given how big Apple App Store today is. 15% seems reasonable, 10% would be ideal. Though it should be 15% for everybody, no artificial caps. Moreover, I believe once you become a platform there should be an independent nano-courthouse where you can appeal. Today being rejected by Apple, Amazon, or Google platform is equivalent to the economical death penalty for many individual…

15% is almost like state level tax. They shouldn't ask more than 5% or they should take payment per app review and take no sales commission. The app store is what makes their iPhones useful, so in my view they should be paying developers to make apps not the other way around.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#50
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple software/hardware ecosystem delivers no value?

Why should developers also pay for this, when end users already do? Apple is double dipping like a world-class monopolist (see: ISPs who charge both peers and customers).

Apple provides value to both end-users and developers. It does not seem unreasonable to charge them both. And if Apple did not charge developers, that would suggest they’d have to raise prices on end-users to make up the difference, which does not seem fair to the users.
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